


Just Like A Prayer

by CommanderInChief



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, Not Berena, shameless Christmas fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 17:56:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8926708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommanderInChief/pseuds/CommanderInChief
Summary: Life is a mystery
  
  Everyone must stand alone
  
  I hear you call my name
  
  And it feels like home
  
  
  
  Bernie and Alex's last Christmas.





	

 

Smooth jazz was already leaking under the tent flaps by the time she’d slipped her bland mess uniform: a plain grey dress cut off just below the knee paired with a jacket an alarming shade of traffic-light red. For a second, she lingered by the bathroom mirror, thoughts drawn to the little wooden box under her bunk. Make up. From Marcus, it’d come with a bottle of perfume that reeked of air freshener. The bottle was long gone; the delivery wouldn’t have been a smooth one. The rest however, with its closed seals and unbroken matt surfaces, had hardly been touched since the minute it arrived.

There wasn’t time to make a decision when a momentary rise of the music followed by the slight crunching of sand on fake-wood alerted her that she was no longer the only person in her tent.

She knew the silhouette off by heart.

“Major?”

“Bern,” She corrected as if to say, _We’re alone_.

“All the others gone off to the mess?”

“I would’ve done too if I didn’t have unfinished business here,”

Alex, in an outfit identical down to medals suspended on her breast, leant against the doorframe with a face like a cat with its face in a Christmas turkey “I’m flattered,”

“Don’t be – it’s because I can’t get the back of this bloody dress up,” Her fingers fumbled around the general vicinity of the zip as reiterating her point.

The brunette just giggled, the front of her hair falling into her face as she grinned at the floor “C’mere. What did you do without me?”

The touch was gentle in the dip of Bernie’s back. She shivered anyway.

“Worry a lot less, for a start,”

“For the last time, Bern,” There was a gentle ‘click’ as the zip found where the dress ended “no one’s gonna find out, so long as we’re careful,”

“I don’t mean about me,” Still half-enclosed in Alex’s arms, Bernie turned to put her hands either side of her lover’s face, thumbs brushing over the base of her closed eyelids “If someone’s going to find out, they’ll find out. Won’t stop us liking each other.

I worry about _you_. You know what it’s like out there,” She kissed her forehead, lingering long enough to take the first proper breath since they’d last ripped apart. The coarse, gritty regiment shampoo always smelt better on her. Somehow, she made it taste like grapes.

“I could lose you,”

Alex scoffed at the damp floor tiles.

“Oh, come on you daft old thing, you’re not even drunk yet,”

…

There wasn’t much about the hall itself to set it apart from any other on any other day. If anything, the Christmas short-staffing had made it grubbier. The tarp walls had built up an almost impressive reservoir of sand and, as Bernie discovered when her low heels stuck slightly, the floor certainly hadn’t been cleaned recently.

And yet, after less than ten seconds in what was essentially a glorified marque, both women were smiling. Inside, men and women of every rank, age and number of medals were dancing. Proper dancing, too. Occasionally, a head Bernie recognised with dive up like a wave from the thick, moving crowd. Clean sweat, when mixed with smoke from silent party-poppers and the leftover scent of roast potatoes, hung in the air like good, damp soil.

At the far back, just high enough that they could see it when the crowd drew in, was the sort of flimsy metal stage you’d get at primary school plays. The band up there, a collection of instruments that Bernie wouldn’t know where to begin naming alongside pin-up girls and men in fedoras, had, between them, been producing a constant flow of classic dance-hall jazz almost since she’d clocked off patrol.

All this biased by the lighting, which’d been dimmed and slightly yellowed, was almost like a late summer evening back in England.

If you ignored the Christmas tree, that is.

“A dance, Miss Wolfe?” The voice, male and plummy in a way that screamed _‘armchair general_ ‘ came from somewhere to her right. Lost below the clamour, it took Bernie a second to distinguish the slightly short, red-faced man on her right. It was probably his third attempt at a pass at her in little over a month and yet she still hadn’t got a name to go with his current mental title of ‘ _monopoly man_ ’.

“General, I’m very sorry but-“

She could’ve sworn that his fat fist left a hand-sized bruise on her shoulder “Oh, come on, my girl, make an old man’s Christmas?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,”

“If it’s the noise in here you don’t like we could always go somewhere more private? A bit of peace and some good brandy,” The quirk of his eyebrows spoke for itself “What do you say?”

“I’d really rather not,”

“Why not? Hmmm?” Coming closer, he cocked his eyebrows for a second time.

In their new proximity, Bernie could’ve sworn that she was getting pissed by simple diffusion of the stale spirit in the man’s breath. It was natural instinct to recoil before she either slapped him or fainted from holding her breath.

By the time he’d next come round to speaking, it’d started to look like both,

“It’s not like you’ve got a _boyfriend_ hiding around here somewhere. After all, we both know the protocol says that’s _very much_ not allowed,”

Bernie had to fight the need to glance at Alex as her blood went cold. No matter how many times she ran the mental equation for the probability that the man almost tripping over his own feet _knew_ , it was the only thought permitted in the empty shock as it span round and round and round.

_He knows._

_He knows._

_He knows._

Ironically, it was the sensation of one of his oaf-like hands grasping at her jacket that broke the loop.

Or rather, the sound of Alex ripping him away and throwing him out into the mass of dancers. A small crowd had begun to gather and whilst the majority were good-naturedly chuckling along at the General’s expense, both women knew from experience that these things could turn nasty. Quickly.

“Is everything okay, Ms Wolfe?” It was a formality but a necessary one.

“Yes. I think he’d just had a bit too much to drink. No real harm done, though,”

“Come on then, let’s see if the boys’ve left us with anything behind the bar,”

A token smile later and they slipped forward, keeping to the outskirts of the dancing mass. The combined saxophone and stiff shoe leather gave them enough to noise to speak unheard but was just far enough off that they didn’t have to stand too close.

“Alex,” She hissed, standing slightly behind as they passed the bar she’d mentioned earlier “What was that all about?”

“He was about to grab you,”  

“You do know that if it were any senior rank other than me, I’d have to report that as an incident of violence?”

“As opposed to whatever he was trying to get up to with you,”

“He was harmless,”

“You don’t know that, you heard what he was saying back there,”

Somehow, three cellos and what Alex could only describe as a strange 1920s take on meat-loaf, still wasn’t enough to drown out Bernie’s sigh “You don’t seriously think he was trying to suggest anything?”

“No, but that doesn’t go to say that no one else will,”

“And I suppose that throwing him half way across the front-line stopped that?”

They were broken up by a couple of lads engaged in what was either a carefully choreographed jazz routine or a boozed-up attempt at swan lake. Either way, it was an opportunity.

Shamelessly, Alex took it, “Fancy a dance, Major?”

Bernie tried to glare, her eyebrows lifting slightly like they always did when they she was supposed to be annoyed “Not whilst we’re both still sober, Captain,”

“All the lads are at it, you won’t look any more of a prat than you already do in that jacket,”

With an almost physical agony, Bernie cracked, the corners of her mouth giving her away “Oh, go on then – but only the one, mind you,”

The words were barely out of her lips when Alex started to drag her by, the wrist, to the centre of the makeshift dance floor,

“Then let me make it count,”

And make it count she did, twirling her senior officer with the same effortless grace that she wielded a needle or Bernie a scalpel. For Bernie, it felt less like dancing and more falling through carefully timed dips and turns only to be caught by the same strong arms over and over and over until her feet throbbed and her lungs pounded.

Only when the fourth song came to a finale finish and Bernie, red faced and giggling, fell against her partner’s shoulder to catch her breath, did she feel Alex tense.

 _So much for keeping each other at arm’s length_.

“Don’t look,” muttered Alex into the shoulder pads of Bernie’s jacket “But I think we’re being observed,”

“Really?” With so little time before their pose became suspicious, Bernie couldn’t afford not to speak quickly “Who by?”

“Who isn’t?”

“We’re that interesting?”

“With you in that dress-”

“Shush. What’s the plan of escape?”

“Me out the front, you out the back, at your tent in fifteen?”

“Done,”

It couldn’t have been much later than nine O’clock when Alex slipped through the tent-flap to find Bernie already waiting for her.

“Sorry I’m late, the boys wanted a dance lesson before they let me escape,”

Bernie just smiled, slowly shaking her head.

With what could almost be called a smirk, Alex went to tuck her hair behind her ear only to find it already there.

“What is it?”

The blonde took a step forward “Oh, ignore me. Daft old major, remember?”

“Maybe you are drunk after all,”

Slipping her hand into the Bernie’s, Alex reached up on the balls of her feet to place a kiss that was more breathing than kissing against her lips. The air they shared was dense and slightly too warm against their faces but neither made any attempt to pull away.

Somewhere, off in a haze of alcohol and Christmas crackers, the band changed to something slower. The soft melody seeped into their little bubble and there, in the middle of the grey old dorm, they swayed together, hearts beating slightly out of time to music.

“Merry Christmas, Bern,”

“Merry Christmas, Alex,”

**Author's Note:**

> In case you were wondering, this is based on this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM-1ETeSdXg - because jazz covers and Holby City appear to an unexpected weakness of mine!


End file.
